Vibrant orange flows majestically through the sky like water. Its uniqueness and distinction from the common picture is what leaves many awestruck. This splendor comes from none other than Cohort 21’s Rachel George. A winner in the business school’s Smith Photo Contest, Rachel’s picture features what she calls, “Raining Fire on McKeldin Mall.” You might be wondering how she was even able to capture a moment like this. She describes photography as “a way to show someone a story from a split second in time.” This is Rachel’s experience catching the treasure of the moment.
What is the “raining fire” in your photo?
The “raining fire” is literally sparks of fire. We went out to the mall on a night after it had rained, so that everything was wet and wouldn’t catch on fire. We took a kitchen whisk attached to a long wire and stuffed it with fine steel wool. Once you light the wool on fire you can swing it around on the wire to make globes or rings of fire, and it’ll shed sparks in long arcs — you can see why we needed everything to be wet. In this particular photograph, we had wet my friend’s umbrella in the fountain, and one of the other photographers stood up on the fountain edge to swing the lit whisk in a ring overtop of it. The streaks of light come from the sparks of steel wool that were shed off the fiery ring and flew down over the umbrella.
Walk me through the process of how you choose which kinds of scenery to take photos of, like the one your award-winning photo featured.
It’ll depend on my end goal, but I don’t usually go out with the intent to pick the “perfect” scenery and subjects—scenery isn’t even usually my primary focus, normally it’s looking for interesting subjects or something small that tells a story. If I’m out on a photo walk for fun I’ll wander and look for moments between people, or actions that catch my eye. If I’m photographing events I’ll focus on faces, the expressions and reactions that will show the emotions and purpose of the event; people tend to like to look at faces and actions in photographs (at least I know I do).
My photo for the Smith contest was taken on a photo walk with some other photographers, with the goal of playing around with light and fire painting. You have to do it at night, but if you set up the camera on a tripod and leave the shutter open for 20-30 seconds, you can draw in the air with flashlights and fire and it’ll leave a trail behind on the final photograph. We each came into the photo walk picturing certain photographs we knew we wanted to make, and then as we got into it we kept getting inspiration for new ideas.
Was there anyone who inspired you to get into photography?
When I was growing up, my grandfather (who traveled a lot) would always bring back photos from his trips on old-fashioned slide reels, and at family get-togethers we’d gather around to watch them all projected up on the wall. Because of my grandfather I associated photography with world travel from a young age, and as a kid I wanted to go to all the places he had gone. A major reason I took my first photography class in high school was because I thought it would be fun to have photography in common with my grandfather, so you could say he was my biggest inspiration. My dad was another inspiration, because he was also a photographer for his high school yearbook (I use his old film camera). I like the connection photography gives me with my dad and my grandfather from when they were younger.
What kind of hobbies do you like to do outside of photography?
I love travel, if that counts as a hobby. I love reading and try to keep that up as much as possible, as well as drawing just for fun. I like running outside (when it’s warm out) and I do martial arts, which is a great stress reliever!
For anyone interested, be on the lookout for Rachel’s picture in Van Munching Hall featured for the spring semester, it’s truly a moment you don’t want to miss out on.